Brief Note: Hillary's Likely Middle East Foreign Policy

Michael Lumish

It's always dicey, and usually quite foolish, to predict the future.

Nonetheless, this morning I intend to take a quick whack at it.

What we are likely to see going forward is a Hillary Middle East foreign policy that will be similar, in broad strokes, to Obama administration tendencies.

This will mean the continued erosion of US influence in that part of the world resulting in a power vacuum - as we are clearly already seeing for a number of years, now - that will be filled by Russia, Iran, and mutating rogue Jihadi forces like ISIS.

The Hillary administration, much like the Obama administration, will continue to support certain Islamist organizations, like the Brotherhood in Cairo, but not others.

If she follows Obama's Middle East foreign policy then she will divide the Islamist world into three parts:

Good Jihadis (who we support, like the Brotherhood).

Bad Jihadis (who we sometimes kinda fight, like al-Qaeda).

And

Jihadi groups that the US is basically indifferent toward (such as Hamas in Gaza or Hezbollah in Lebanon).

Hillary will not - or so I suspect - be quite as reluctant as Obama to use American military force, but will be exceedingly reluctant to strike at Islamist groups, with the possible exception of the Islamic State.

She will also, like Obama, probably refuse to publicly note that "radical Islamic extremism" is "radical Islamic extremism" and will, thereby, hobble FBI efforts to stymie the advancement of Political Islam or Islamic terrorism within the United States because they will not study "violent extremism" within the context of Islamic primary sources, such as the Quran and the Hadiths.

In terms of the Arab-Israel conflict, Hillary will unfortunately stay the course.

That is:

1) She will continue to demand a two-state solution, despite the fact that the Palestinian-Arabs, themselves, emphatically want no such thing and are not the least bit shy about using random violence to prove it.

2) She will continue to insist that Jews be allowed to live in some places, but not others, within the Land of Israel. She will then blame those Jews (those insidious settlers), and the Israeli government, for Palestinian-Arab refusal to accept a state for themselves in peace next to Israel.

3) Through such behavior she will, knowingly or not, bolster the ambitions of anti-Semitic anti-Zionists, Israel Haters, and their friends in the BDS.

Meanwhile, things will become even more uncomfortable for pro-Israel Jewish students on American campuses and Jews with a sense of self-respect will slowly, quietly, over many years, depart from the Democratic Party.

We shall see.